They were back at the fountain as she had promised, Nicky’s sweet round belly against the marble ledge as he tried to reach for the penniesnickelsdimes tossed into that over-chlorinated water by puppy-love teens and small children who begged, like Nicky, for change, which she refused to give when he’d come whining five minutes ago, three minutes, two, one. She wasn’t about to raise the kind of person who just went around throwing coins into any pond or stream he saw, necessitating the signs at their zoo and the park with easy hikes.
“Please do not throw coins in the water; it’s harmful to the animals. The ducks and fish thank you!”
Regardless, they sparkle from the bottom of the pond surrounding the big-horned sheep and under the bridge at Tryon Creek, and seeing them makes Nicky whine and demand equal treatment under the law, as her husband liked to say.
For the umpteenth time today, she responded by asking, “Hey, Little Man, why do we not throw coins in the water?”
She was aware of an older woman watching them, and she swells as she sees his face crumple and knows he will answer as she has taught him.
“Because fishes and ducks choke and die, and it’s bad for the ‘viroment.”
“Good boy. We have to be better. Set an example. And eventually”—now the lie she hopes he might someday believe even if she can’t—“others will be better too.”
So Nicky went back to paddle his small perfect hands and sing to the water.
The baby was on her lap, cooing happily as she prepared the bottle with the little pre-poured container of formula, the distilled water already measured, a process she could complete eyes closed as a building burned down around her.
She avoided eye contact now; their faces might betray the same disdain her own used to show when children were as yet a dream on the horizon, leaning over to stage whisper to her husband, I mean, seriously? With all we know?, not even caring who heard. You could bury her under a pile of all that research and it wouldn’t have prompted her own apathetic mammary tissues to produce an ounce of milk. But the baby was happy, thriving, and all she could do was shrug to that earlier version of herself, so righteous in her ignorance.
She called Nicky’s name and waggled her phone at him, offering a distraction because Violet, once begun on her bottle, must not be moved nor stopped. Last week, Nicky let the cat out and she’d had to put Vi back in the bouncy cradle to chase it down the street, and the tantrum which followed lasted the entire day, Violet refusing every bottle, screaming at the top of her lungs until she popped all the tiny blood vessels on her face, and they rushed her to the emergency room where the nurses watched her and her husband in a way that, even now, made her want to scream, smash their computers, grab a handful of tongue depressors from their pockets and shove them into their eye sockets.
Even if this mall did burst into flames, she would climb into that fountain and let Violet finish.
But Nicky shook his head and turned back to the water, and she paused a moment, uncertain, wondering if she should raise the bid: play on the phone and have the fruit leather she kept hidden for just such bribes? But she would let him manage himself. See how it went. And if he did well, she’d think of some surprise, an extra show, one of mommy’s favorite chocolates. Moments later, he was on the ledge, walking like a drunken acrobat, saying “whoa, whoa!” while she kept saying, “Nicky, all done now. Come here, Sweet Boy. Come to mama, Little Man.” Around them, people watched, their smiles easing away. And when he crashed into the water, everyone turned to stare. Two women who had been splashed were pulling out a blouse, a pair of jeans, a suede jacket from their designer bags and holding them up, dripping, then glaring at her.
And something rose in her, tipped the levee, broke the other side.
“Jesus Christ, Nicky, would you come and just sit down for one goddamned second!”
This was not her voice. She would never speak like that. It was her mother, standing at the back door, screaming into a summer evening that they damn well better be home in the next five minutes or god help her. . . . It was her father’s voice, hollering at her brothers as they stood elbow-to-elbow before that wall of rage saying whichever of you shit-for-brains took my tools was about to get a boot up his ass, the other one too for good measure.
The old woman who had given one of those friendly, “haven’t you got your hands full!” smiles looked at her now in a way that brought blood to her neck, to her cheeks, tears of fury into her eyes, as though that old fucking witch could do any better.
Nicky had come and sat beside her, the only sound the gurgle of the fountain, the drip of water under his seat where a puddle was forming. Everyone was moving off. One of the women with ruined clothes muttered something about where to find security. Another parent with a baby in a stroller, a toddler perched on the ride-along platform, watching wide-eyed and mute, pushed past, avoiding her gaze.
And Violet kept sucking on her bottle as she handed Nicky a towel from the diaper bag, pulled the tags off his new shirt and shorts with her teeth, helped him peel those wet clothes off, shivering in the brutal air-conditioning as she dried and dressed him, gave him a hug and told him, “it’s all right, Little Man. We all fall in fountains sometimes,” digging a handful of coins from her change purse.
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